MH-273 Eat Sugar - ¡Levántense!Sprouting from the fertile Ohio musical landscape that produced everyone from The Raspberries to Brainiac, Eat Sugar's debut full-length ¡Levántense! is the perfect mix of punk rock pugnacity filtered through modern electro, with a dash of heart-on-on-their-sleeves romanticism to keep the blood warm. Produced by musical superstar John Schmersal (Enon, Caribou) in a breakneck nine days, these ten tunes capture everything Eat Sugar is about. Echoes of electro, pop, garage, punk and disco can be heard on the album, a red-hot playlist that can get even the most wilted of wallflowers to dance before they realize what they’re doing. From the spat-out verses of "Standing Still" through the cascading keyboard lines of "Troubled Dreams" to the deep groove of "Shadowside", ¡Levántense! will break your heart, kick your ass, and leave you wanting more.

Eat Sugar blends the intensity and retro essence of the Hives with the uber-cool electro-pop of LCD Soundsystem. Rather than using guitars as their weapon of choice, this Cincinnati outfit uses synths and (real) bass and drums to create their raucous, winking garage rock. On ¡Levántense!, the band buffs the sharp edges of their previous two EPs down to a slightly softer sheen, with a few tunes - like "Run the Company" and "Troubled Dreams" - feeling more radio-friendly than past efforts. But plenty of songs follow the garage-rock template of no-holds-barred bark and bite ("Clap You Hands" and "Dry" are rabidly feral stompers, and "Outsider Art" is all delirious, staccato bursts of energy), and a few tunes stray from either formula: "Shadowside" is slinky and goth-hued, vocalist Aidan Begosian delivering a smoky croon rather than his more pervasive, sharp-toothed yelp, and "The Revivalist" is a bare-bones, swaggering delight with disco rhythms and laser beam synths. Eat Sugar are at their best when they light the sweaty, funk-punk fuse, as on the percussion heavy (more cowbell!) "Standing Still." Not Gonna Happen. - iTunes